EPIC: Fourteen Books of Fantasy (378 page)

It was true, and it was something I’d been taught well. “Not all battles have victors. Not all battles end with one side standing triumphantly above the rest. Sometimes all sides lose.”

Khavi uncurled his body, and then dragged himself up. “Sometimes both sides lose, yes, but there’s no shame in such an outcome. Yeznen taught us both that.”

“Yeznen taught us many things, some of which I am beginning to doubt the truth of.”

Khavi blinked. Perhaps he hadn’t heard me properly, or perhaps he didn’t care. “Ren, surely you can’t be serious.”

I shrugged, looking away at the stretch of tunnel identical to so many others. “I wish I weren’t.”

Khavi seemed about to reply, but didn’t. Instead he simply slumped over on his side and stared blankly at the wall. “I’d be angry,” he said, “but I just don’t care anymore.”

I knew exactly what he meant.

We stayed there, in that kink in the tunnel, for the entire day. Neither of us could summon the strength to get up. Khavi’s mood was like a festering wound, infectious and spreading to me; whatever was left of my energy was drained straight from my body, my desire to live seeping out my claws and into the stones itself.

We were waiting around to die. It seemed inevitable. Time would meander along until it finally happened, but as I lay there on my back, Khavi beside me, staring up at the ceiling and quietly begging the stones to fall down and crush us, I had an idea.
 

“Let’s go see the copper dragon.”

Khavi turned his gaze to me. “What.”

His enthusiasm aside, the idea gripped tight around my heart. I bolted upright, scrambling to my feet.

“Listen,” I said, “it’s something I’ve always wanted to do but never had the opportunity. Tyermumtican is known for his wide and broad knowledge, plus he doesn’t eat kobolds on sight. Sometimes he talks to our kind.”

Khavi gave me a vague look of disgust. “He doesn’t eat
all
kobolds on sight,” he corrected me, “but he often does.”

“We’ll be one of the exceptions.” I said. “He won’t eat us.”

“And you know this because?”

“Because we’ve been through dozens of gnomes, enemy tunnels, a spider’s lair, and through the
end of damn world
. Our story doesn’t end with
chomp, chomp
, dragon shit.”

Something in what I said stoked the fires in him. Khavi ever so slowly climbed up to his feet and glared directly at me. “You didn’t answer my question.”

“I know,” I said, “but it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t end here. It
can’t
end here.”

“Putting yourself in fate’s claws is pointless. Real kobolds make their own luck.”

I knew those words. Another lesson, repeated straight from Yeznen’s lips. Khavi’s parroting grated on my nerves, and I curled back my upper lip, snarling. “Don’t you have an original thought of your own?”

Khavi’s eyes flared with light. “I know enough to recognise the wisdom in others. To learn from what they have to say. You talk of stories and fate like we can control it, but everyone in Atikala is dead, their corpses swollen and rotting as we speak. Do you think those who were resting when it happened thought their story would end with them being crushed to death in their sleep?”

I gently bit the inside of my cheek. This approach wasn’t going to work. I needed something else. “Well, okay. Maybe not. But let’s say we go anyway, the copper’s in a bad mood, and decides to make us into a couple of snacks, what happens then?”

Khavi narrowed his gaze at me. “We get torn in half, then our digested remains are passed in a smelly pile of shit.”

“Not a bad way to go. Quick, painless, easy. Not like a couple of kobolds could do much more than die when faced with a true dragon anyway, but we have a chance. Coppers aren’t immune to my fire and you’re strong enough to last a while. We’d give him the best fight he’d seen in some time.” I glanced down at my claws idly. “How many kobolds are given the opportunity to fight a copper dragon?”

Khavi’s frown turned into a scowl, but I held his gaze, my determination matched by his. Then he broke into a laugh.

“You pull my tail, goldling. Come. Let’s go give a dragon indigestion.”

Chapter X

I
T
TOOK
K
HAVI
AND
I some time to work out exactly where we were, pouring over the map we had taken from the corpse of one of No-Kill’s party. Our sense of altitude told us that there was only one part of the tunnel network we could be in. Based on what I knew of Tyermumtican’s lair and the gnome settlement, we figured out which of the dots on the map was the dragon’s home.

We were closer than we thought.

The more we talked about it, the more Khavi became his old self. Navigation was a strong point of his, and perhaps something he was good at doing helped return his energy.

I looked around at the campsite, at the disorder and our mutual carelessness, and on Khavi’s face was a look of disdain and shame. It mirrored my own.

We cleaned. It was a good feeling to sharpen our weapons at last, to gather all our water, food, bedrolls and blankets, and to restore everything to their rightful place within our haversacks.

This simple act of discipline gave me more hope than it really had cause to give. It was more than simply reorganising and sorting; it was me asserting that I still had influence over the world, still had some part of existence that I controlled.

Khavi, though, still seemed to have a shadow over his heart despite his outward improvement. Perhaps whatever weighed upon him affected him more than I, or perhaps the goal of visiting Tyermumtican affected me greater, I didn’t know. But to his credit, he cleaned too, and soon our packs were set, and we were ready to depart.

The sooner we were gone from that tunnel where it was too easy for us to lay down and wait for death to take us, the better.

We strode into the gloom, following a map we did not understand, written in a language we did not read, but my spirits were higher than they had been in a long while.

Time passed quickly as we moved down and west, away from the catastrophe that had befallen our home. I had imagined this journey many times in my dreams and during my waking hours, so to actually do it was a great personal moment. I imagined myself walking at the head of an army, bashing down the wrought iron gates of a dragon’s lair and bursting inside, demanding the answers that were already laid out before me, presented for my inspection. I would read them, digesting every word, and everything in my life would be complete.
 

And then I would learn who I was.

Instead, I was a cold, sore, hungry, and tired kobold, travelling not with an army, but a grump who had lost the will to fight. The dragon’s lair, too, failed to live up to my expectations.

The tunnel led to a subterranean lake, hundreds of feet wide and with a ceiling dotted with stalactites. By my reckoning it was higher than the gnome settlement. Inlets poured in from above, columns of water adding to the pool, filling the hollow dome with a constant rumble. Light crystals lined the edge of a centre ring, bathing the water in their faint blue light. The centre was large enough for the greatest of dragons to fit inside.
 

A pool within a pool. “So this is what a dragon’s lair looks like,” I said.

“Looks like a lake to me.” Khavi scowled and reached over, claws disappearing into my haversack, rummaging around. “Let me see that map again.”

“No,” I said, shaking my head.
 

“No?”

I flicked my tail, pointing inside my haversack with it. “No. Well, look at the map if you want, but this is the place. I can feel it.”

“More of your feelings,” said Khavi, closing my pack. “They endanger both of us.” I heard him unfurl the map, and I knew he was reading it, trying to make sense of the gnomish script.

I shrugged off my haversack and squirmed out of the chainmail I’d taken from the dead Darkguard. I barely heard Khavi’s distracted muttering as I removed the padding, then my belt and weapons, stripping down to bare scales, then dipped a claw in the water. Cool and calm, perfect to drink.

Or other things.

I slipped into the water, the stones underneath my feet smooth and slimy. The surface of the water rippled out as far as I could see, washing up against the inner ring, distorting the perfect mirror shine. I’d never felt water like this before, deep enough to walk into, and the ripples felt strange against my scales. I worried about the depth of it, but it felt so calming and relaxing that I kept walking out. When the water level rose to my chest, though, I knew I could go no further.

“Khavi!” I called out over my shoulder. “Come in and help me get across to the other side!”

“What in the hells are you doing?” he called back, his question ending in a hiss. He put down the map and scrambled over the stone, splashing roughly into the water’s edge. “You’ll die!”

I didn’t think I would. I paddled around, feeling my body respond to the movements of my hands. “Come on in,” I laughed to Khavi, frozen at the water’s edge. “it’s not dangerous!”

“You’re insane!” Khavi stared at the water just like he did to the bottle No-Kill had drawn from the underground river, clearly uncomfortable with it just up to his ankles.

“You big coward!” I laughed again and dared to push off with my feet, away from where I could stand.

I sank below the water. Instinctively, my feet reached out for the bottom of the lake, but there was none. I searched with my tail but found only water. Now that it was over my head the cool and refreshing feeling vanished; it suddenly felt cold and smothering. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t tell which way was up. I tried to call for help and inhaled a mouthful of chilled water. I flailed uselessly, sloshing through the dark water, and reached for anything to grab hold of.

My claws sank into something soft, and I gripped for all I was worth. The thing wriggled, moved, drew me deeper into the water.

Or towards the surface. Light—faint—from the crystals surrounding the lake’s edge.

I burst to the surface, gasping for air, thrashing around feebly. I was being dragged up, scraping my scales on the stones, then I was lying flat on my back.

I twisted around my neck to see who had dragged me out of the water.

A gnome man, older than old, with white hair, sat rubbing his arm. He wore thick robes, soaked completely through. His eyes were milky, vacant and unseeing.

Behind him Khavi had his weapon in hand, slowly advancing towards the stranger.

I flopped over onto my belly and tried to speak, but instead I threw up a lungful of water. I coughed and drooled as the gnome rubbed the armour on my back and spoke comforting sounding words in the fey tongue.

“Wait,” I said between gasps, shaking my head at Khavi.

“You speak draconic?” said the gnome, switching languages, his old face wrinkled into a calm, easy smile. “This is good. If you speak the tongue of dragonkind you must be supplicants seeking Tyermumtican’s wisdom. I am Laughless, guardian of the great one.”

Laughless. What kind of a name was that? I worried that Khavi might do something reckless, but fortunately he stopped his approach. Khavi’s posture did not relax. I thanked him with my eyes.

“We are supplicants,” I said, but more water found its way up before I could continue.

“There, there,” the gnome said, his voice soft and soothing, “let it all out.”

I jerked backwards away from his touch. I wanted to shout for the gnome to leave me alone, to never touch me again, but instead I simply hacked up the last of the water, vomiting onto the stone.

“Quite often do the gnomes of Stonehaven come to us bearing gifts,” he said, looking at me but not meeting my eyes. “But so rarely do they drown themselves in tribute.” He tilted his head, his hands massaging my back, soothing my protesting lungs. “I’m not sure why you thought the great Tyermumtican would favour a gift like this.”

Stonehaven. The gnome settlement had a name at last.
 

“It was an accident,” said Khavi, prompting the gnome to turn his head in the direction of the noise.

“Oh? You have a friend, how lovely.”

Khavi pulled a face, twisting his snout up in disgust. “We’re—”

“Friends,” I said, forcing my tongue to work despite an overwhelming urge to vomit. “We’re friends.”

“Indeed,” said the gnome, “and does this friend have a name? Do you?”

“I am Ren, and this is Khavi. We’ve come—” Our true home almost tumbled out of my lips by reflex, but I caught it on the very tip of my tongue. “From Stonehaven.”

“Ah, I see. I was not aware our people had any supplicants I had not yet met.”

“We’re young,” I answered, “but that’s not important. We’ve come seeking answers.”

“Answers are dangerous things.”

“I know,” I said, “but I have to know. What has happened? What caused the ground to shake?”

“I felt such a thing.” He hesitated. “But I sense that is not
truly
why you are here.”

I couldn’t think of a lie fast enough. “I am a sorcerer. I also want to know where my power comes from. What blood flows through my veins.”

The gnome’s blind eyes shined in the lake’s dim light. “Do you think it’s your blood that makes you different? That gives you power?”

“I don’t know what to think.”

He wheezed out a laugh. “Then you really don’t know anything, do you?”

I was vaguely offended, and Khavi’s anger was building. Being mocked by a gnome was not an insult he would bear lightly. “That doesn’t seem fair,” I said.

“If you truly want to meet with Tyermumtican you should prepare for further unfairness, Ren.”

I stared at the gnome, my eyes locked on his unseeing eyes, my hands firmly by my sides.

“I will keep that in mind.”

He tittered, far too whimsically for my taste, but seemed pleased. “Make sure you do.” He arched his back, ancient bones creaking. “Tell me, Khavi, are you a sorcerer too?”

Khavi shook his head at me, his claws uncomfortably close to his weapon for my tastes. I motioned for him to move them away, but he deliberately ignored me.